Gran Turismo 5

On:PlayStation 3

Each year, normally around Christmas, thereâ€™s typically a handful of blockbusters released. This is true in most media industries to a certain extent, but never quite so much as in videogames. Even then, itâ€™s still pretty rare for a title as anticipated at this one to come along: a title that is so significant it almost cements the current version of the PlayStation itself as having truly arrived as a platform. Polyphony Digital, after all, are the developer that somehow always manages to squeeze just that little bit extra out of Sonyâ€™s hardware. Sure, it always takes them ages but itâ€™s always been worth the wait.

The last release in the series, Gran Turismo for the PSP, is arguably the most valid direct comparison to GT5. Itâ€™s recent, it was announced 5 years before its release, it experiencednumerousdelays and... ultimately it was disappointing. Thatâ€™s not to say that GT5 is either bad, per se, or as disappointing as its baby brother, but thatâ€™s itâ€™s disappointing is (unfortunately) in no doubt.

Whatâ€™s not disappointing is the sheer depth of the content on offer. In addition to the vast array of vehicles, tracks and other "box ticking" content (we could burn our word count just listing the stuff, so we wonâ€™t), there are a few notable new inclusions. Primarily, the new B-Spec management mode (hire and fire drivers, do everything but actually race) brings a whole new experience to the simulation.

There are also go-karts to drive (fun and quite a different play style to other car types), a TV mode where you can download video content (some free, some paid), a course creator and (up to) 16-player online modes. If youâ€™ve got a 3D TV you can enjoy stereoscopic racing action and you can do neat stuff online like give cars to your mates, etc. When it comes to sheer volume of features, there are no complaints - GT5 is packed to the brim.

The Gran Turismo and Arcade modes are, of course, still there - both packed full of content. In GT mode, you level up (in addition to earning cash to spend on cars), bringing a new and actually quite compelling facet to the experience. Thereâ€™s loads of unlockable content based on your level, license and cash accumulated too. Cool (and not so cool) things include the ability to tackle Nascar with Geoff Gordon or a race around the Top Gear track in VW Combi vans (a truly painful experience - whereâ€™s the "get out and push" option?!).

The cars, of course, look unbelievably good. The attention to detail here is off the hook - with few exceptions (things like license plate textures), the cars typically look photo realistic. The detail really delivers on the promise of those oh-so-nice screenshots Sony has been teasing us with prior to the release of the game and it ensures that, when you finally get that car youâ€™ve been working towards, the payoff is worth the time invested.

The tracks often look gorgeous, particularly during the day. The day-time lighting model is excellent, with effects for glare and transitioning between light and shade being particularly impressive. Nighttime is less successful, with unrealistic light volumes and unusual light colours completely throwing out the "realistic" visuals that the title so clearly strives for.

The photo mode is preposterously gorgeous to behold and, as usual, is a strong point for the title. You can adore your car from every angle, creating completely impossible but utterly fantastic glory shots to drool over at your leisure.

Online mode, however, is utterly broken. No doubt a result of the servers suddenly being hammered by an impossible to simulate millions upon millions of players at once, the entire experience suffers from weird hiccups. You canâ€™t, for example, leave a race once youâ€™re signed in if all of the players havenâ€™t chosen to "start race", without disconnecting from PSN. Itâ€™s easy to grief other players by exploiting issues with the service and some players have even reported that modes which are entirely unrelated to online suffer from huge performance issues while theyâ€™re connected to PSN (we didnâ€™t experience anything like that). While the online is quite poor at the time of writing, the building blocks for a compelling experience seem to be in place and we have every faith that Sony will burn the midnight oil until the teething issues are resolved. Until then, online is likely best avoided.

Mechanically, racing the cars is extremely sound. Things like drafting, grip and cornering mechanics all feel realistic - so much so that my virtual car loses grip about the same time and way as my real car. In theory. No idea what youâ€™re talking about, Officer. Cars each behave in a noticeably different way and, after spending serious time behind the wheel of various vehicles, youâ€™ll fall in love with the peculiarities of a particular model and refuse to upgrade from it - even if there are better (on paper, at least) options available. The various track surfaces all realistically affect your grip as you change between them and each track will require that you learn the optimal line if youâ€™re to attain maximum speed in your chosen vehicle. You can tweak the driving model, too, altering numerous aspects of the way the car handles. In particular, the option to disable the various assistants that keep newbies on the road is particularly useful for advanced players that really want to feel the road beneath them.

Itâ€™s not all as successful, however. Continuing with the driving mechanics, the driving model of the AI competitors is once again deeply disappointing. Never a strong element of the series, itâ€™s nonetheless a let down to see an extremely crude implementation of driver AI in a game that, at the end of the day, is all about driving intelligently. Computer drivers still drive like moronic automatons, following extremely obvious lines religiously - even if you currently occupy the space they want to be in. You can, finally, shunt them off their line but the effect of doing so is marginal at best - even the super arcadey and ten-years-old Burnout had a more cohesive computer-controlled opponent than this. The net effect is that you basically ignore them, concentrating instead on how you handle your car on this track to the conditions, treating them as moving obstacles - and nothing more. In that itâ€™s still kinda fun but you canâ€™t help but wonder why they bother having the cars there in the first place if their control algorithms are going to be so rudimentary.

Visually the racing is, believe it or not, somewhat disappointing as well. Yes, it runs at 60 frames per second and yes, thatâ€™s at 1080P - something which should be, according to some theorycrafting around the specs of the chips in the PS3, impossible. But when you look at how clinically various elements of the environment are portrayed, with simplistic textures used in places, material (like plastic fences, etc) that resolutely refuse to move, oddly flicking light levels and numerous other visual artifacts that notably affect the visual package, etc, itâ€™s hard to remain 100% enthusiastic about the the way the game looks.

Another visual presentation issue (again, something the series is typically poor at) is the interface: specifically, the layout and usability of that interface. Itâ€™s rubbish. The in-game UI stuff is fine, if a bit staid (itâ€™s 2010, people, not 2001 - itâ€™s OK to do something interesting with your in-game UI). But the menus... itâ€™s as if every possible interface mechanic was ranked in terms of usability and the developers accidentally chose the one at the bottom of the pile. Everything you want to use, at the time you want to use it, seems to be the greatest possible distance from your currently selected menu widget. The GT mode is laid out like a web page, complete with a virtual mouse cursor, despite the fact that no GT gamer is likely to ever hook up a mouse (if thatâ€™s even possible, which it probably isnâ€™t). Itâ€™s awful to navigate with a steering wheel, too, despite the fact that GT players are the most likely people on the planet to be playing games with one. Itâ€™s unintuitive in a way that only games from the 1980â€™s could have gotten away with (and then, only barely).

It takes ages to load, too, even if you opt-in for the 8GB / FIFTY MINUTE (it claims 30 but it took 50 on my "fat" PS3) installation option. One bright side here, however, is that there is no load required to restart a race / challenge; this is a huge boon as itâ€™s something youâ€™ll need to do from time to time and, as the load times are quite long, not having to go through them when youâ€™re frustrated you failed is a very good thing indeed.

Animation, too, is bizarrely inconsistent. The few in-game people that appear (outside of the spectators, which are fine) are low resolution, awkward looking puppets that move eerily similar to Thunderbirds characters. Digital Polyphony seem to have avoided the uncanny valley problem by taking their character tech straight out of the 1990â€™s. In isolation, itâ€™s bad enough but when viewed alongside the gorgeous cars and (mostly) impressive track vistas, itâ€™s puzzling that they didnâ€™t end up on the cutting room floor.

The sound, again, is somehow lacking something magical. Engine sounds are mostly good but never feel particularly grandiose. Maybe itâ€™s realistic but then again, when I gun my Mini, it sounds a lot more frotty than the pathetically generic noise on offer here (although maybe Iâ€™ve got an exhaust leak...). The music, too, is all over the place - the best possible example is the music for the intro. In itself, this is a great piece of music. Is it appropriate for the title? Categorically, the answer is no. Itâ€™s free-jazz twangs stand out like a pair of old running shoes nailed the the forehead of a gorgeous woman - it just. doesnâ€™t. belong. there. Sure, it may well be an homage to Francis Ford Copollaâ€™s Koyaansisqatsi (music by Phillip Glass) but it still doesnâ€™t work.

Throughout the title, too, music is randomly bang-on or completely bizarre, changing randomly between sounding like youâ€™re at a club or at a lounge bar in Vegas. When itâ€™s good, itâ€™s great, but even then youâ€™ll here particular bits of music over and over again, with the repetition bordering on criminal torture (earboarding?). That said, this wonâ€™t come as news to GT fans, who have been reaching for the "music: off" setting in GT games since the first one.

If you slam into a car at high speed, something that Iâ€™ve (thankfully) never done in real life, chances are pretty good that it will sound almost exactly not like this. Here, instead of the expected screechy / crumply / smashy sound of plastic, metal and glass deforming with urgency, weâ€™re met with something that sounds almost exactly like someone farting underwater (donâ€™t ask). At what point did the designers decide that a good sphincter expulsion, somewhat deadened by a large volume of liquid, was exactly the auditory exclamation they were looking for? It would almost sound better if some dead-pan guy said "bang" into a microphone, rather than the sad whimper on offer here.

One of the features we didnâ€™t mention earlier is the alleged damage model. While it is in here, itâ€™s so limited it may as well not be. For a start, very few cars support it - you could play through most of the game without seeing it at all. When itâ€™s there, itâ€™s such a let down compared to almost any other racer, you can help but wonder whatâ€™s the point. The collision damage system in Carmageddon, for example, a thirteen year old game, felt more realistically connected to the onscreen action.

Customization of your vehicles is technically present, albeit in the wake of the Forza series, itâ€™s woefully inadequate. You can change the colour or tweak a small performance aspect of the vehicle but, for the most part, itâ€™s like building a car out of Lego - compared to Forzaâ€™s rearranging of atoms via the electron microscope.

It may sound like Iâ€™ve taken this game to task. In a way, I guess, I have - but the game really isnâ€™t awful. What it is, is disappointingly average. Where it does shine (and it does shine quite brightly) is the "CarPG" aspect of the career mode. Sure, the mechanics are merely average but the desire to move through the copious volumes of content is stronger than ever before. Thereâ€™s just so much to do, so many tracks, so many modes, so many cars - thereâ€™s a lot of hours of entertainment here, and itâ€™s as addictive as any MMO. But, like an MMO, the core gameplay is frequently pedestrian (although it does definitely take skill to advance, something which is typically not the case for an MMORPG). Itâ€™s also a blast to just go for a drive, ignoring the idiosyncrasies of everything outside of the game and the moronic AI and just pushing yourself and your car to the limit on some back-country road. Itâ€™s here, perhaps, in the titualar "driving simulation", that GT holds its own best of all - which is why, at the end of the day, that it manages to score as highly as it does.

With all this hype, generated as a result of the repeated brilliance demonstrated by the developers themselves in the first place, we were expecting something... more. A lot of its flaws are skin deep - and they wonâ€™t stop people from enjoying the rich experience that the Gran Turismo mode represents. But ultimately, this seems to underline the impression that Gran Turismo on the PSP gave us - Polyphony Digital and Gran Turismo itself have peaked, and that peak was not in these particular iterations.

When determining whether to recommend the game or not, itâ€™s obvious that I need to split my recommendation into two core audiences: GT fans and racing game fans. GT fans will love it; theyâ€™ll forgive it for its (numerous) faults, as they are (for the most part) skin-deep. Theyâ€™ll disappear into the GT mode and not emerge for months, completely oblivious to the issues which plague the title. Racing game fans, however, will have a rockier relationship with the title - a driving simulation this may well be but racing simulation is something it is much less successful at.

Comments (32)

You do make some valid points, but i have this belief like all games that are coming out lately that they still have 'holes' in their design that aren't noticed until day one, in this case Online was no where near ready at all...i even had a situation where i gave Stillmatic my extra Go-Kart so he could race but it didnt recognize him as a friend for a full 10 minutes and once he did receive it, the game then decided not to recognize my other kart and forced me to watch the race unfolding...was not cool. and then to make matters worse when i finally did get on the race the whole server crashed and crawled (Limply) back to Single player....was lucky enough to drive my fave car though. For all its faults this game is good.

To be honest, there was a time when GT was *the* racer to get. In a post-Burnout world, we've seen it become less of something everyone should get and more something that people who really like cars, should get. It seems the protracted development was more about getting the details right. A shame.

I kind of agree with this review. I love the game and probably would personally give it a higher score, but for all that they got right, there are so many things you can't help but look at and go "what the f**k were they thinking?"

Very fair review I thought. I too as a hardened GT fan was expecting more this time. They seem to have reduced the number of races you can do, and the karting, rally, NASCAR etc. seems tacked onto me. And where are the BRAKES? I scoured the Tuning Shop and couldn't seem to buy Brakes?! WTF? Somebody please correct me if I'm wrong. That said, I have already set aside my little racer-cave for playing this solidly for the next few months.

I think only the most die hard GT could argue the points you have made in the review Allan. GT5 is in many ways disappointing, though definitely not a complete failure, really feels like an HD GT4 to me, even the licence tests seem plucked straight from the last iteration.

I'm still enjoying the game it's just not all I had expected after all these years.

@roscopct you're right no brake options in the Tuning Shop, infact customisation is pretty lacking, whats up with the paint options??

Never thought I'd say it after all the hype, but I think Forza 3 may seriously be the best racing option on the market still.

So far, my only problems are loading times, mainly because it's f**king 2010, and how going 150kph actually feels more like 80 when watching the side of the road, yet alone going 300kph. That still felt like 80kph

I agree with all points of this review, and to add about the stereoscopic 3d, it looks good but is frustrating to setup and not really worth it. It allows you to set the strength of the 3d effect, though requires you to set a convergence offset to fix the ghosting. I put the effect to 8 which made it really look good, but there was terrible ghosting, so I fixed the convergence, now it looked good in closeups, but bad in wideshots, I can't seem to find a balance, and this is all while going in and out of the options menu to check it at the title screen (with load times). This is topped with it being reduced to 720p and reduced framerate. I tried it for a few hours and had really sore eyes so have since turned it off for good.
I prefer how the stereo was setup in Motorstorm, you turn it on, that's it. They've set convergence levels per camera. I mainly bought this for the 3d and am pretty disappointed.

I remember getting a playstation 1 with the original GT for my 5th birthday. I found it uninteresting compared to the cake and other gifts. Later i found out about crash bandicoot, and my love of platformers began.

Disappointment of this gen for me. I fell for the hype and wanting some nostalgia from when I was a teen, the nostalgia is definitely there, problem is it plays "exactly" like the GT's I played as a teen, but I've played too many great racing games this gen and PD seems to have ignored all advancements in the racing genre they have bought.
Granted, this is still really great for the racing enthusiasts, which I why I'll probably give my copy to my dad for xmas.

Not sure i get the AI complaints. They've had a large improvement and they don't just follow the racing line. They take risks, sometimes succeeding, sometimes spinning out, which aren't scripted like previous GT's.

If i get too close to one of them they tend to create space for themselves by moving to the side, sometimes they fight for the spot themselves.

I had an underpowered car and had two cars coming up from behind to take the lead, looking through my rear-view i tried blocking their path on the straight and they'd back off, though another managed to slip by in the process.

Another time i was 5th, the race leader was on their own with 2nd,3rd,4th about a second behind him who were right in front of me, right out of the corner 3rd and 4th made a move to overtake 2nd on each side of him with me trailing right behind. They were 3 cars wide, i tried to use the slip stream and slip by too but cut it too close ending up on the grass spinning out. XD

You can change the sound completely around and cut out the lounge music and put what you want to listen too. but really who wants the music anyway.
The minor tweaks do make a massive difference to the way your car handles etc.
Im enjoying it, yeah the brakes are missing but you have a balanced booster/controller option.

"At what point did the designers decide that a good sphincter expulsion, somewhat deadened by a large volume of liquid, was exactly the auditory exclamation they were looking for? It would almost sound better if some dead-pan guy said "bang" into a microphone, rather than the sad whimper on offer here."

I totally agree with the review, excellent review Alan. All negative aspects u depict are exactly what I have found annoying and disappointing. Especially considering the time of development and the constant delays. I truely dont see what they have done with their time? This is an HD version of GT3/4 for sure. No gameplay has improved, the AI is still terrible, like they are on rails. Sound is terrible (thud from hitting a wall), and the sound effects drown out the music ( i had to set SF on 30 and Music on 100 to just balance them both). Graphically the cars are very nice, but did find it annoying that only the Premium Cars can go into the Photo Travel mode!! The textures and graphics on the track surrounds are just plain poor.
Dont get me wrong Im still enjoying the game, been playing it solid but was just expecting SOME improvements, especially considering the delays and promises, guess i wanted more than just some pretty looking cars.

I mostly agree with this review but you seem to be missing a few core things that this game is about.
Mainly 3D, head tracking and how this game is about realism and accuracy of each car and track. Including the handling.
I am jealous of the fact that you can get online, If my ps3 is connected to the internet then it litterly takes 15-20 mins to get into the GT mode.
And ultimately, It does feel like gt4 HD.. thats not a bad thing... just expected so much more for such a long development time

@brettz0r He said the basic highlights of GT5 were the car realism and handling.. But the AI disappoint again soo much that they might as well not be there - and Id have to agree with him on both points.
How does the head tracking work? Seems gimped to me - doesnt turn the view in the c*ckpit at all on mine.
And i havent had any probs with the online (only the superficial disabled things). Had no lag with the MP or load time issues. I must be one of the lucky ones?

27 November 2010, 06:22 PMReply to OliverI kind of agree with this review. I love the game and probably would personally give it a higher score, but for all that they got right, there are so many things you can't help but look at and go "what the f**k were they thinking?"

29 November 2010, 02:19 PMReply to SpawnSeekSlayI totally agree with the review, excellent review Alan. All negative aspects u depict are exactly what I have found annoying and disappointing. Especially considering the time of development and the constant delays. I truely dont see what they have done with their time? This is an HD version of GT3/4 for sure. No gameplay has improved, the AI is still terrible, like they are on rails. Sound is terrible (thud from hitting a wall), and the sound effects drown out the music ( i had to set SF on 30 and Music on 100 to just balance them both). Graphically the cars are very nice, but did find it annoying that only the Premium Cars can go into the Photo Travel mode!! The textures and graphics on the track surrounds are just plain poor.
Dont get me wrong Im still enjoying the game, been playing it solid but was just expecting SOME improvements, especially considering the delays and promises, guess i wanted more than just some pretty looking cars.

I don't get all this dumb complaining about damage. It's Gran Turismo, you aren't supposed to crash. ever. I loved 3 and 4 and was glad the only customization was tuning. I love the music that is used through the whole series, though 2 def had the best.

Gran Turismo is the only series that actually emulates true real world physics and dynamics while maintaining the fun factor.

And everyone complaining about added toys like damage and web-play: This is a career game, where 101% of the focus is on driving and progressing until you have a 787-B. If you want destruction play NFS, if you want a crap racing game that drives itself for you then play Forza. GT is as close to simulation as you can get without it being stupid hard.

29 November 2010, 08:00 PMReply to SpawnSeekSlay@brettz0r He said the basic highlights of GT5 were the car realism and handling.. But the AI disappoint again soo much that they might as well not be there - and Id have to agree with him on both points.
How does the head tracking work? Seems gimped to me - doesnt turn the view in the c*ckpit at all on mine.
And i havent had any probs with the online (only the superficial disabled things). Had no lag with the MP or load time issues. I must be one of the lucky ones?

The problem here is that you think that somehow the AI should adapt to you driving a faster car or maybe be more agressive, funny thing is that the later would actually disqualify a racer in a race and the former is unrealistic if implemented in the way of NFS where they drive the same car but are 5% faster to compensate for bad AI. The AI drives the perfect line because that is the line real racers take.If you are taking different lines then expect to pit more often and crash out more often.

1 December 2010, 12:28 PMReply to ninjaquickI don't get all this dumb complaining about damage. It's Gran Turismo, you aren't supposed to crash. ever. I loved 3 and 4 and was glad the only customization was tuning. I love the music that is used through the whole series, though 2 def had the best.

Gran Turismo is the only series that actually emulates true real world physics and dynamics while maintaining the fun factor.

And everyone complaining about added toys like damage and web-play: This is a career game, where 101% of the focus is on driving and progressing until you have a 787-B. If you want destruction play NFS, if you want a crap racing game that drives itself for you then play Forza. GT is as close to simulation as you can get without it being stupid hard.

I didnt mention anything about damage in my comment you replied to so dont know who your talking too.
As for damage it is such FAIL that it shouldnt have been bothered to be put in there... Just a pointless feature they f**kd around implimenting that delayed the game.
I had to smash into >75 fences and rails in a rally car to get the door to fall off... the rest of the car panels just look like a crumpled aluminium can. The car drives basically the same if not for a wheel alignment problem... If this was "Realism" the car shouldnt even go after 4-5x hitting the walls with the speeds i was going lol
Shouldnt have implimented it. Nuff said.

1 December 2010, 12:33 PMReply to ninjaquickThe problem here is that you think that somehow the AI should adapt to you driving a faster car or maybe be more agressive, funny thing is that the later would actually disqualify a racer in a race and the former is unrealistic if implemented in the way of NFS where they drive the same car but are 5% faster to compensate for bad AI. The AI drives the perfect line because that is the line real racers take.If you are taking different lines then expect to pit more often and crash out more often.

Dude what can I say to your fail comment about racing? Do you have an idea? Go watch some racing or even better go participate in some , then play GT5.
The AI are zombie cars holding the racing line, thats all they do, im not saying they shouldnt?!? But they should acknowledge you on the inside of them in a cornering pass.. not ram you or take your tail end out through the corner... in a real-life race the outside car would surrender and take a wider line in hope to sometimes out-accelerate the passing car on the exit.
The game is a driving simulator, not a racing game. It fails to be so because of rubbish AI. Forza, NFS, Burnout all have far better AI AND they hold/known there racing lines also, but know when to surrender and when to take you on the inside.

I hate this game as a Racing Game.
But love this game as a Driving Game (love trying the feels of different cars and different setups)

Yeah the AI is pretty rubbish.. they tried to make them more realistic by adding that tension bar for the ai.. the harder they push the more likely they are to stuff up. That how ever doesnt compensate for the ai racing around the track like your not even on it and running into you all the time.

PS: for anyone playing this game. Do not buy the f1 cars unless you want to race online / arcade with them as this is all the game will let you do with it. You can not use it in A or B spec mode.
Waste of my $10,000,000 that took forever to save up for

A Great fun game to play. The race car seat and steering wheel we aquired 6 years ago has had the dust wiped off. Now if only I could get the kids out of it to have a go. Truly a fun game to play as a family.

To be honest I think this racer has had it's day. While the hype machine may have earned the developers and producers a few extra bucks; it was ultimatly to the detriment of the franchise.

I wonder if we will see another Gran Turismo in the future? I think not by the original deveolper but maybe the rights will be sold to another lesser developer who will do a crap job but earn a decent buck on the back of the games name. Then that will be the final Gran Turismo outing.